The Sea Scout Handbook Downloaded From: “The Dump” At

The Sea Scout Handbook ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks are due to the following for their kind permission to use diagrams and material: – The Controller of H.M. Stationery Office and the Hydrographer of the Navy (for permission to reproduce a part of British Admiralty chart No. 5103); the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office (for permission to use a plate in “Sailing Ships,” Part I); Mr. Charles L. Spencer (for permission to copy sketches and the section on worming, parcelling and serving from his wholly admirable and indispensable book “Knots, Splices and Fancy Work”; Mr. G. N. Boumphrey (for use of his excellent handbook “The Story of the Ship”); Lieutenant-Commander Frank Carr, R.N.V.R., and Peter Davies, Ltd. (for permission to use material from “The Yacht Masters Guide”). Acknowledgement is also due to all other Sea Scout handbooks! Downloaded from: “The Dump” at Scoutscan.com http://www.thedump.scoutscan.com/ Thanks to Dennis Trimble for providing this booklet. Editor’s Note: The reader is reminded that these texts have been written a long time ago. Consequently, they may use some terms or express sentiments which were current at the time, regardless of what we may think of them at the beginning of the 21st century. For reasons of historical accuracy they have been preserved in their original form. If you find them offensive, we ask you to please delete this file from your system. This and other traditional Scouting texts may be downloaded from The Dump. Page 1 The Sea Scout Handbook CHAPTER I TENDERFOOT (1) I expect you’ve all heard a song that often comes over the air which begins, “I must go down to the seas again, to the lone sea and the sky; And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.” It’s by John Masefield, a poet and a fine writer of yarns, who was for many years himself a sailor before the mast. He called his song “Sea Fever,” because he knows that, like himself, many Englishmen had a feeling like a fever in their blood for the sea: we belong to an island race; fine ships sail through the years of our country’s history with fine seamen in them. And that’s why two years after the first Scout Camp on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, B- P, said, “We must have Sea Scouts” – that is, members of the brotherhood of Scouts who are particularly interested in the seas and the ships that sail on them. Now, too, all these years later we have Air Scouts, who are interested in the problems of flight and the great oceans of the air, just as the great body of Scouts are interested in special activities of the land – in forestry and pioneering and the countryside. But this is what we must remember, whatever sort of Scout hat you wear, and whether your interests be in woods and over the hills, or on rivers and seas, or in the cloud-inhabited air-ways, that you are all SCOUTS, and that is what every fellow who comes to our Movement must never forget. A Sea Scout is a SCOUT at all times, so that Sea Scouts, like all other Scouts, take the Scout Promise: On my honour I promise that I will do my best – To do my duty to God, and the King, To help other people at all times, To obey the Scout Law. (2) At the very beginning of man’s venturing forth on the water, he realised the many dangers which faced him, and before he set out he offered up prayers to his God asking for protection on his perilous voyage. In the early days of Christianity it was the custom to place upon the main mast of large ships a statue of the Blessed Virgin or the patron saint of the ship, or perhaps a crucifix. Every seaman, upon coming aboard a ship, either took off his hat or made the sign of the cross as a form of salute. Later many of the great ships erected small chapels on the after part of the ship, so that men passing by the chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament was reserved, saluted as a sign of reverence. As the years went by and changes came, chapels were no longer erected on board ship, but sailors continued to salute the quarter-deck – and so do Sea Scouts, not only because they with the sailors know the dangers of the deep, but because it reminds them that they have made a promise to do their duty to God. All Scouts remember their duty to God first and foremost. All Scouts – and this means you! – try to live obeying the same Scout Law, and have the same aim; to become First Class and King’s Scouts. Of course, as you go along this road, as a Sea Scout you will look at things from your own angle, and will find time to train yourself in all these matters that those who go down to the sea in ships like to know. And all the while as a true Scout you will be trying to live a decent, happy, manly life, using your Scout Promise and the Scout Law as the charts to help you navigate the perilous oceans of the years. Page 2 The Sea Scout Handbook (3) “There is nothing,” said the Water Rat (in “The Wind in the Willows”), “absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats ... in boats – or with boats . in or out of ‘em, it doesn’t matter!” But I’d better point out to you right away that there’s a certain amount of training that all Scouts are proud to do, and your Tenderfoot and Second Class tests are not only good Scouting – if you learn them properly as a Sea Scout should – but exceedingly good seamanship at the same time. As a Sea Scout you must know something about First Aid; you must be able to deal with the average accident before a doctor can be brought in. As a Sea Scout, if you cannot do signalling, you are both deaf and dumb when you are aboard a boat or a small ship that hasn’t got wireless. Observation is absolutely essential – and knowing what you have observed and being able to reason from it. If you are Coxswain, and have to bring your boat alongside anywhere, you have to judge the direction and strength of the wind, and whether the wind is stronger than the current; you must decide whether your crew can be depended on to carry out your instructions and bring your boat alongside for whoever is a passenger to get out. Unless you are trained in observation you will never do it. A Sea Scout must know how to use an axe, which should be part of the equipment of every boat – and heaven help you using one in a small boat on the water if you haven’t learned first to use your axe correctly on land! So go straight ahead for that First Class Badge. But first of all a word about logs – not the sort you sit on. Every Sea Scout should keep his own log, just as every Patrol should keep a Patrol Log – and just as a ship has a ship’s log, in which is included the distance a ship has done, her position, and anything which may have happened on board. And that’s what your logbook should contain – your progress in Scouting and an account of the things you do; and if you can illustrate it with some drawings and snapshots, all the better. So save up and buy yourself a fat exercise book, and then (as decoratively as you can) inscribe on the first page “This is the log-book of Sea Scout whoever- you-are of wherever-you-live, of the whatever-your-Patrol-is of the whatever-your-Troop-is!” And you might add a decorative sea serpent or two as the old map-makers used to do. There are other Scout books which will give you most of the information you require about Tenderfoot and Second Class tests. But there are one or two points we must emphasise as you’re a Sea Scout. First of all, about the Union Jack. Do you know the difference between the Union Flag and the Union Jack? The combined crosses of St. George, St. Andrew and St. Patrick should always be known as the Union Flag, unless they are flown from a Jack staff, which is a small staff on the end of the bowsprit (a large spar projecting over the bows) or at the fore end of a ship; when they are flown thus they should be known as the Union Jack. The Union Jack is flown at the Jack staff by all H.M. ships of war when at anchor, but not at sea, unless the ship is dressed for some special reason like the King’s birthday. At sea the only man who can fly the Union Flag is an Admiral of the Fleet, and he flies it at the main masthead. Merchant ships fly a Pilot Jack, which is a Union Jack with a white border. In the days of the Stuarts a fleet of King’s ships might number up to as many as 200 sail, and these were divided into three main squadrons: the senior squadron in the van flew the Red Ensign, and the Admiral in command flew the Union Flag at the main; the second squadron in the rear flew the White, and the Vice-Admiral had the Union Flag at the fore; the junior squadron in the centre flew the Blue Ensign, and the Rear-Admiral wore the Union Flag at the mizzen.

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